ST. LOUIS – Olympic golf tees off Wednesday and Thursday as 60 women and 60 men compete in separate, four-round stroke play tournaments at Le Golf National’s Albatros Course.
Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Wyndham Clark, and Collin Morikawa represent Team USA on the men’s side, with Nelly Korda, Lilia Vu, and Rose Zhang on the women’s side.
Paris 2024 is just the fifth Olympic Games to feature golf. The sport returned to the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and the Tokyo 2020 Games (held in 2021) following a century-plus hiatus. Golf debuted at the Paris Games in 1900 and the subsequent 1904 Olympics in St. Louis.
One of St. Louis’ favorite sons participated in both the 1900 and 1904 golf events—the only competitor to do so—and is credited with making sure the 1904 Games even had golf on the program.
It may be a now-defunct advertising campaign, but St. Louis may lay claim to being the home of the real “Most Interesting Man in the World.”
Albert Bond Lambert was born on Dec. 6, 1875. His father, Jordan W. Lambert, founded the Lambert Pharmaceutical Company, which marketed the surgical antiseptic Listerine. Albert briefly attended the University of Virginia before returning home in 1896 to become president of his father’s company. Albert was 21.
Albert became enamored by the game of golf and was invited to play in the 1900 Olympics. The men’s tournament, featuring 22 competitors representing four countries, took place on Oct. 2, 1900. The women’s tournament was the following day. Back then, the Olympics were a multi-month extravaganza. Lambert won the men’s handicap competition, though it was considered a non-Olympic event, and finished eighth overall in the men’s championship.
After returning home, Lambert and his father-in-law, George McGrew, founded Glen Echo Country Club in 1901. When the 1904 Games were awarded to St. Louis, which would occur at the same time as the World’s Fair, Lambert and McGrew were set on keeping golf on the Olympic slate. Lambert and McGrew convinced Olympic officials to host the event at Glen Echo.
Women’s golf was cast aside for the 1904 Summer Games, with 75 men from two nations (the United States and Canada) participating in a seven-day tournament beginning with a 36-hole stroke play qualifying round, followed by five rounds of match play. Lambert made it to the quarterfinals before losing to eventual gold medalist George Seymour Lyon of Canada. Lambert claimed a silver medal as part of the second-place United States team.
During the World’s Fair, Oscar II, the King of Sweden and Norway, visited Lambert at his newly-built home in the Central West End. The king allegedly gifted Lambert with a giant fireplace for the solarium.
Albert continued to play golf, winning the 1907 Missouri Amateur Championship at the St. Louis County Country Club. But by the middle of the decade, he’d found a new passion: aviation. Lambert’s money and notoriety afforded him great opportunities; he began ballooning in 1906, cofounded the Aero Club of St. Louis in 1907, and funded the city’s first airfield in Forest Park, where he helped organize and promote balloon races. Lambert was elected to the St. Louis City Council and served from 1907 to 1911. He also went back to school and graduated from the Smith Academy at Washington University in St. Louis. By 1909, Lambert had purchased a plane from the famed Wright Brothers. In 1911, he became the first St. Louisan to hold a pilot’s license. His instructor? Orville Wright.
When the United States entered World War I, Lambert organized a flight school for balloonists. The school was quickly subsumed into the U.S. Army Signal Corps and Lambert served as its commanding officer and was given the rank of major.
After the war, Lambert helped purchase Kinloch Field, northwest of St. Louis, in 1920 (keep that one in mind) and it was used to host the first National Balloon Race. Lambert also flew biplanes and turned the plot of land, now bearing his name, into a legitimate airfield.
Albert became chairman of Lambert Pharmaceutical in 1923 but stepped down in 1926, according to the Dictionary of Missouri Biography, after it became a division of a larger company. The corporation became Warner-Lambert following a merger in the mid-50s. Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer acquired the company in 2000.
Lambert was introduced in 1926 to Charles Lindbergh, a brash pilot who dreamed of flying across the Atlantic Ocean nonstop and was in need of funding. Lambert led the fundraising effort with the Spirit of St. Louis Organization. Lindbergh’s plane bore the organization’s name for its 1927 transatlantic flight from New York to Paris.
In February 1928, Lambert leased his airfield to the City of St. Louis for just one dollar. Later that year, the city bought the field outright thanks to a $2 million bond, making it one of the first municipally owned airports in the country. It was officially renamed Lambert-St. Louis Municipal Airport in 1930. It’s gone through a few name changes in the decades since, but Lambert’s name is still part of the official title.
Lambert died on Nov. 12, 1946, of heart failure at the age of 70. He was buried at Bellefontaine Cemetery. His parents, his wife and children, and all but one sibling are buried in the family plot.
